]]>The Wat Phra Dhammakaya, north of Bangkok, Thailand, is the world’s largest Buddhist temple and one of the fastest growing groups within Buddhism. As many as one million followers can participate in corporate meditation in the temple courtyard. But Dhammakaya also has its critics, who question the motives of its leaders and ask whether nirvana is for sale at this temple unlike any other. “People often think Dhammakaya only cares about donations or cares about getting people to the temple, but that is just an impression based on outer appearances,” says Phra Sandr, a Buddhist monk from the Netherlands. “When people come here for a while they notice that there is a very important core where people are learning to practice character.”

KIM LAWTON, correspondent: On any given weekend, some 15,000 people worship with the evangelical Northland Church, but about a third of them never set foot in the building here in Longwood, Florida. They’re worshiping online via the Web and Facebook and Smartphones.

MARTY TAYLOR (Northland Church, Director of Media Design): We call ourselves a church distributed because we don’t want to be confined to this space. We want to be everywhere, every day, and technology is a great tool for us to be able to do that.

LAWTON: On site, worship leaders always welcome the online participants. On this Sunday that includes a small gathering at a nearby prison and people from as far away as Japan. As the main service progresses, online minister Nathan Clark connects with his virtual flock.

NATHAN CLARK (Northland Church, Online Minister): I provide pastoral care. I provide direction and really help them connect to other people around them as well, ultimately to connect them to God while they are in the worship environment.

LAWTON: Sometimes that includes offering an online prayer.

CLARK: For a long time I said, “I will pray for you right now,” and in 20 seconds later, “Okay, I’m done.” But I don’t think that has the punch. I type it all out, and I email all the prayers. A lot of people have told me that the prayers that we exchanged together they actually took and they printed out and carried them around with them afterwards, and it’s cool because it ended up giving that prayer shelf life far beyond what you and I would experience if we did it out loud.

LAWTON: With the explosion of online technologies and social media, religious institutions across the spectrum are finding more and more creative ways to connect with their members and reach out to new audiences. The Vatican, for example, has its own channel on YouTube, while the Dalai Lama tweets updates through Twitter. The innovations are providing new ministry opportunities, but some wonder if they are also changing fundamental beliefs and practices.

Northland Church and its prominent senior pastor, Joel Hunter, have been on the cutting edge of using new technologies, and they are helping others follow suit, especially churches in other parts of the world. Their online worshipers, they say, are demographically much like those who attend the main service. But the online ministry allows Northland to connect with people who wouldn’t have been comfortable attending a church. At the same time, Clark says Northland has created a worldwide church community.

CLARK: The relationships the Apostle Paul had that we see throughout the New Testament were often carried out by letter, and I don’t think there’s anything that substantially different than what we are doing here.

LAWTON: Still, some question the nature of a virtual religious community.

REV. HENRY BRINTON (Fairfax Presbyterian Church, Fairfax, VA): There’s a level of trust and support and accountability that you get in a face-to-face relationship with someone which I don’t think is possible online.

LAWTON: Reverend Henry Brinton of Fairfax Presbyterian Church in Virginia believes that, especially in the Christian tradition, there are limits to how much worship can really occur online.

BRINTON: There is something powerful about coming into a sanctuary and being with others. We still require that baptism be done with water and that communion be a community meal where real bread is consumed, where the fruit of the vine is received, and people do feel a very strong connection with God and with each other through those physical acts.

TAYLOR: Our goal is not for someone to log in and watch a service and, “Hey, I’m done.” We want them to be in community with other people where they meet together and have a meal together and go out and serve others together.

LAWTON: One way of doing that has been through Roku set-top boxes that enable people to watch Web-streamed video on their TVs. Northland created the first church channel on Roku, which allows people to gather in places from bars to prisons to homes to watch the live stream of the service. About 150 miles away from Northland Church, a small group gathers every Sunday to watch on Marcy and Ron Burth’s 53-inch TV.

RON BURTH (Northland House Church): The main reason why we bought the big TV was for sports.

MARCY BURTH (Northland House Church): We were going to watch tennis, call the balls, be down on the football field. God had other plans.

LAWTON: The Burths hadn’t been able to find a church they liked in their own neighborhood, and they invited neighbors who weren’t part of a church either.

MARCY BURTH: We have a closeness that you don’t have when you’re in a large congregation, but we really do have the benefit of the live service coming into our home.

RON BURTH: It seems to be unorthodox, but yet it’s really the early church that did meet in homes initially.

LAWTON: Would you go back to a traditional church having been through all of this?

MARCY BURTH: Probably not.

LAWTON: Outside Boston, the Daughters of St. Paul are also making active use of new technologies. Their order was founded almost a hundred years ago by an Italian priest who believed the media would have a profound impact on culture.

SISTER KATHRYN JAMES HERMES (Daughters of St. Paul): He said, “Look at the churches.” He said, “Where are the people? The people are not in the pews. Where are they?” So it’s our job to go out to wherever they are and make that place a church, a sanctuary, a place where they can meet God and God can meet them.

SISTER SUSAN JAMES HEADY (Daughters of St. Paul): Whereas maybe people before might have thought they had to go to church to do religion, they are doing it in the comfort of their home, having religious, theological discussions with their friends—maybe even a lot more fun because people like to get on their computer and go on Facebook.

LAWTON: Many of the sisters have blogs, Twitter accounts, and Facebook pages, and they have developed a series of mobile web apps, such as the Rosary App, that people can use on their Smartphones and iPads. Sister Sean Mayer is an administrator of the Facebook page for the award-winning Daughters of St. Paul choir. She says the tool allows them to interact with their fans almost instantaneously.

SISTER SEAN MAYER (Daughters of St. Paul): I try to put up something every two to three days. When we are actually recording or when we’re on the road, it’s every two or three minutes practically.

LAWTON: Their most active site is the “Ask a Catholic Nun” page on Facebook, which has more than 12,000 followers.

SISTER HEADY: The site was founded not to be a place for debates, but more for information so that people who have questions about the faith or who would like to connect with a sister and may not have the opportunity in their local parish could get on and ask a question.

LAWTON: People from all over the world ask questions about the Christian faith or Catholic Church teachings. Some ask for opinions about difficult relationships. Recently, there were some questions from Muslims trying to understand the concept of the Trinity.

(speaking to Sister Heady): Are there sometimes you’re not sure what the right answer would be?

SISTER HEADY: Well, the good thing about Google is anything you want to know you can Google. So I have my reliable sources, the catechism of the Catholic Church. There’s certainly Scripture. There’s other reliable places that you can search out answers.

LAWTON: She recognizes the limitations and tries to direct people to a local priest or counselor, but this format, she says, also has its place.

SISTER HEADY: Sometimes people need to first venture into a safe place where they are unidentified, and they just connect with someone, and I consider it a blessing that they have connected with me and not some other kook that will lead them astray.

LAWTON: Pope Benedict XVI has encouraged the church to use social media, but he cautioned Catholics to make sure they are authentically representing the church online. Professor Stephen O’Leary at the University of Southern California’s Annenberg School for Communication says the grassroots character of social media does pose challenges to traditional religious authority structures.

PROFESSOR STEPHEN O’LEARY (Annenberg School for Communication, University of Southern California): In many cases, members of the congregation are acting as media producers and are functioning independently of their own local church. So the authorities from the church—pastor up the line to the denominational heads—no longer have the kind of control that they once did.

LAWTON: O’Leary likens social media to the invention of the printing press, which made the Bible and theological debate more accessible to everyone. This, he says, paved the way for the Protestant Reformation.

O’LEARY: It was the innovation which had changed everything and challenged the authority of the church in a way which was never possible before. I think that today’s media technologies, from the Internet to Twitter and all these things, are having a similar effect on the church.

LAWTON: O’Leary and other experts agree it’s still too soon to know what the ultimate impact of social media will be on religion. Still, many groups say there is no choice but to move forward.

SISTER HERMES: I think we have to have a little more faith in God, that somehow he knows what’s happening and that he himself, God himself, is actually using this means to bring some of his love and peace into the world.

Watch more of Sunday morning worship services at Parc Chretien Free Methodist Church; in a tent next to the ruined Roman Catholic Our Lady of the Assumption Cathedral; and in an open-air structure next to the destroyed Holy Trinity Episcopal Cathedral, and see more of correspondent Kim Lawton’s interviews with Rick Ireland, administrator of the Free Methodist Haiti Inland Mission, and Bishop Jean-Zache Duracin of the Episcopal Diocese of Haiti. Edited by R & E news researcher Emma Mankey Hidem.

KIM LAWTON, anchor: A tense national debate about racial profiling has continued since Harvard scholar Henry Louis Gates, Jr., was arrested in his Cambridge home for disorderly conduct. Gates, who is African-American, was arrested by Sergeant James Crowley, a white officer who had responded to a 9-11 call about a possible break-in. The controversy intensified when President Obama said the police “acted stupidly” when they arrested Gates. The president later said he regretted his choice of words and he hosted both Gates and Crowley at the White House Thursday for a conciliatory beer. The incident and the ensuing debate show how divisive racial issues can be in this country. Even though America has elected its first black president, efforts toward racial integration are often still fraught with difficulties, not least in churches where it’s been said that 11 o’clock on Sunday morning is the most segregated hour of the week. Lucky Severson reports.

LUCKY SEVERSON: If something seems odd or unusual about these worshippers, maybe it’s the diversity, all the different colors and nationalities of their faces. This is the Wilcrest Baptist Church in Houston, and Pastor Rodney Woo couldn’t be more proud of the cultural and racial mix of his congregation.

Pastor RODNEY WOO (Wilcrest Baptist Church, Houston, TX): I think my main passion is to get people ready for heaven. I think a lot of our people are going to go into culture shock when they get to heaven, and they get to sit next to somebody that they didn’t maybe sit with while they were here on earth. So we’re trying to get them acclimated a little bit.

SEVERSON: Assuming Pastor Woo is right, there are a lot of congregations that need to get acclimated. A recent study found that only 7 percent of churches in the US are integrated. This comes as no surprise to Ohio State sociology professor Korie Edwards, author of the book “The Elusive Dream.”

Professor KORIE EDWARDS (Sociology Department, Ohio State University and Author, “The Elusive Dream”): We’re segregated in housing. Even the job market is segregated, and we end up going to churches with people who look like us.

Professor Michael Emerson

Professor MICHAEL EMERSON (Sociology Department, Rice University): Sometimes,you know, you’ll hear the statement of African Americans saying, “I have to work with whites. I may have to shop with them. But on Sunday I want to — I don’t want to have to worship with them. I want to be able to just be myself and let my hair down.”

SEVERSON: Rice University sociology professor Michael Emerson, who authored the study on the make-up of churches in the US, says racial separation inside most churches is even more pronounced than it is outside for a number of reasons.

Prof. EMERSON: What we found in the study is that churches are 10 times less diverse than the neighborhoods they sit in.

SEVERSON: Emerson also found that churches in the South were the least integrated, partly because African Americans are concerned about whites taking over their congregation.

Prof. EMERSON: That’s a big fear, right, and when I talk with black pastors, the same thing: If we try to have this move towards interracial congregations, whites will just dominate them. There are so many more of them, and they’re used to being in the position of power, so they’ll just take over, and we’ll lose the one thing we do have.

Prof. EDWARDS: And so what happens in these congregations where you have whites and blacks, even though they may be well intended, people coming together and wanting to do the Christian thing, wanting to serve God together, you’re going to find that these kinds of issues that occur outside of the church come into the church.

SEVERSON: Pastor Rufus Smith of the City of Refuge Church in Houston is one of very few African Americans who lead an interracial church. Smith says when he took over the evangelical Presbyterian congregation it was mostly white, bored, and dwindling. He said he would only agree to be pastor if members promised to integrate.

Pastor Rufus Smith

Pastor RUFUS SMITH (City of Refuge Church, Houston, TX): To their credit, many of those core people decided, you know, come hell or high water, we’re going to try this thing and give it our best shot, though it was an experiment, and here now, 12 years later, we think it’s a grand experience.

SEVERSON: Today the church is about 45 percent white, 45 percent black, and the rest Hispanic and Asian. But Pastor Smith says the “grand experience” hasn’t always been pleasant.

Pastor SMITH: You’re certainly up against the natural stereotypes. You’re up against ignorance. You’re up against some hard-heartedness and, you know, some outright evil with respect to some people.

SEVERSON: Pastor Rodney Woo, half Chinese, grew up in a black neighborhood, went to an all-white church, and married his Hispanic childhood sweetheart.

Pastor WOO (preaching): The poor rich. Let me tell you who they are. They are the people who have a lot of money and nothing else.

SEVERSON: When he came here, the church had only two black members out of 180. Today Wilcrest Baptist has 500 members divided almost equally among whites, blacks, and Hispanics, with the remainder made up of Asians. Woo says he didn’t realize how difficult it was going to be integrating his church.

Pastor Rodney Woo

Pastor WOO: When we started a lot of people were going, “Ah, this is making me feel uncomfortable.” Whether the kids were in the nursery together, or their kids were in the young group, a lot of parents were fearful that their kids might start dating somebody that was a different race.

Prof. EMERSON: In the beginning stages, there’s often a lot of pain, a lot of confusion. A lot of people leave. Maybe there’s even anger. But if they make it through that, it becomes something that people just a lot of times will say, “I couldn’t live without it.”

Pastor SMITH (preaching): Ask me how I feel.

CONGREGATION (responding): How do you feel?

Pastor SMITH: If I was any better, I would have to be twins, and that’s the truth if I ever told it.

SEVERSON: Pastor Rufus Smith has succeeded in not only integrating his church racially. His congregation comes from all walks of life. When it grew, he deliberately located the church between affluent and low-income neighborhoods. Carol Vance, a former district attorney, was one of the founding members.

CAROL VANCE (Founding Member, City of Refuge Church): We picked Rufus because he’s a great pastor, not because he’s black. But I think it’s wonderful that he is, because we’re sitting right here on the edge, and I sort of like to think of our church as the “bridge over troubled waters.”

Pastor SMITH: To me, one of the true tests of the power of the Gospel is to unify people across socio-economic, racial lines, which is what the heart of Christianity is and was.

SEVERSON: Karen Giesen has a doctorate in theology. She says she grew up in a white church where people bowed their head, folded their hands, and worshipped quietly — very different from what she experiences at City of Refuge.

KAREN GIESEN (Congregation Member, City of Refugee Church): The worship style is an issue. None of us are right in probably our heart language style. We’re all making a sacrifice to be there. It’s a mix. A lot of people go looking for churches saying, “I am looking for the one that ministers to me,” and to go here we’ve obviously all made a choice that we want to serve there.

SEVERSON: Rebecca Miller wants to be a pastor. She says she searched to find a church that felt like a community.

REBECCA MILLER (Congregation Member, City of Refuge Church): People worship the way the spirit leads them to worship. I really don’t think that there is anybody saying you can’t shout, you can’t scream, you can’t say “hallelujah” or you can’t clap your hands. It’s not the typical Presbyterian “you can’t raise your hands” church.

Pastor WOO: Where we really changed, and we saw the growth, grow at exponentially, was when the church became less than 50 percent white, and so there was no majority group, and that just changed the entire mindset.

SEVERSON: Church guitarist Jim Kruse married a Hispanic and adopted a Hispanic child. He says he’s learning a few things about his own prejudice.

JIM KRUSE (Guitarist, Wilcrest Baptist Church): What we’re learning is that you may not come to it thinking you are prejudiced. You may be seriously trying not to be prejudiced. But then you find out the things you are doing come across as prejudiced. So I think a lot of our effort has been to learn to relax, to let people be people.

SEVERSON: It would be difficult to find a more graphic example of religion bridging a racial divide than Dwight Pryor and Rick Taylor. Taylor describes himself as a reformed “redneck.”

RICK TAYLOR (Congregation Member, Wilcrest Baptist Church): From where I come from, to be honest, I was taught to hate people like Dwight and to not have anything to do with them and that they were less than I was, and I believed that most of my life. I truly did. But the Lord has a way of showing you your prejudices in your life.

Dwight Pryor and Rick Taylor

DWIGHT PRYOR (Congregation Member, Wilcrest Baptist Church): I grew up in North Mississippi. As a little kid on those school buses, watching those people would shout racist names at me, and some of them were deacons and pastors in our community. It left a cold chill in my heart — a hatred.

SEVERSON: Dwight is a control systems designer, and Rick is a retired general contractor. The bond that has grown between them is plain to see.

Mr. TAYLOR: Racism colors the truth. It makes people not look at other people as if they were human. It goes that deep. It truly does, and Christ teaches us that we are all the same.

SEVERSON (to Prof. Emerson): Are churches that integrate richer because they did it?

Prof. EMERSON: Yeah. I never meet a church that wishes they didn’t do it. I never meet a leader that wishes they didn’t do it. They will all say, to the person, “It’s hard. It’s difficult. It comes with complexities and confusion.”

SEVERSON: And they will say, if they’re like Dwight and Rick, that church integration may not always come easy, but it comes with rich rewards and improbable friendships. For RELIGION & ETHICS NEWSWEEKLY, I’m Lucky Severson in Houston.

]]>Read more of Lucky Severson’s interview about interracial churches with Michael Emerson, Allyn R. and Gladys M. Cline Professor of Sociology and director of the Center on Race, Religion, and Urban Life at Rice University and the author of PEOPLE OF THE DREAM: MULTIRACIAL CONGREGATIONS IN THE UNITED STATES (Princeton University Press, 2006):

Professor Michael Emerson

Q: Fewer than ten percent of churches in America are integrated.

A: Yeah, that comes from our research here, actually.

Q: The number is that low?

A: Yeah, seven percent. That’s what it is.

Q: Were you surprised at that?

A: Yes. Well, yes and no. But yeah, that’s pretty low.

Q: Why? What are the reasons for its being so low?

A: There are three things, and it depends on the group that we’re talking about, but there’s history, there’s culture, and then there’s social networks. So, you know, historically black and white, they worship together until about the end of slavery, and people started moving out into separate churches. But it was because of discrimination and racism and such that blacks began to establish their own denominations and their own churches.

Q: They worshipped together before the Civil War?

A: Absolutely. In part because they had no choice, right? If you were a slave, you did what the master said. And they said to worship: “You’re going to worship with us.” Now they had to sit in separate places and sometimes they’d even have to sit outside and look through the windows. But they did worship together. So we didn’t get the denominations and the separate congregations really till about into Civil War time. What’s happened then, of course, is now that we’ve had well over 100 years of this history to establish separate cultures, different ways of worshipping, and different ways of understanding theology so that when people try to come together makes it very difficult. And then, of course, social networks, you know, how do we find a place to worship? We go where our family goes. We go where our friends are, and because our social networks are so segregated by race, we end up with what we have. We also find that, you know, if you’re immigrants, you’re not part of that history. So it’s a little bit different experience. So it may be a language that separates you — again, social networks. But second-generation Asian and Hispanics, second, and third and fourth and so on, they are much more likely to be in integrated churches than are blacks or whites.

Q: Are churches a reflection of our society? We live in different neighborhoods. We work in different jobs.

A: They are. But what we found in the study is that churches are ten times less diverse than the neighborhoods they sit in. So there’s something more going on than just reflecting the neighborhood, yeah.

Q: What is going on? Is it cultural — that it is difficult to accept an outsider? Is a black church accepting whites, or the other way around?

A: I’ve been in both settings and observed, and I think when non-blacks visit a black church they will feel, they always talk about feeling so welcomed and warmly greeted but being surprised or shocked or whatever by the length of the service, by the different worship style. If we go into white congregations, non-whites will sometimes say it felt like worship never started. It was sort of dead and didn’t feel that warmly received. But so — and there are different realities either way, and it makes it difficult for all groups to try and cross boundaries.

Q: Generally white services are more calm and by the book and a lot more emotion in black services. Is that difficult for whites when they go into a black church?

A: Right, right. Preaching styles and people being slain in the spirit and things like that. Now it doesn’t happen in all black churches, and it happens sometimes in white churches, right? But on average they’re quite a bit different.

Q: The congregation saying “Amen”?

A: Call-and-response style, yes, exactly. So whenever different groups get together then there has to be this long period of negotiation. How will we worship? What’s acceptable? What’s not? If I want to say “Amen” can I? It’s one of the things we find in these congregations is that they are much more likely to be sort of up-beat worship styles, more likely that people in these congregations say “Amen,” maybe get up and dance some, tend to be a little bit more lively than a typical white service would be, but not as lively as a typical black service would be.

Q: What is most likely, a black church that’s integrated with whites or vice versa?

A: We rarely see that. Almost never.

Q: Why is that?

A: Because I think whites are used to being in power, so when whites think we ought to have integrated churches they think, “People ought to come to our church. What can we do to get them to come?” I meet almost no one that goes to an African-American church or thinks, “I’m going to do that.” Now there are whites in African-American churches. They’re interracially married. They’re highly committed. Maybe there’s a professor or two, or a student. Once in a while you get people that maybe because of economic reasons, or have a social network, they get attracted. But it’s a very tiny percent so that when we look at, you know, who are pastors and who are the head clergy of these congregations, they’re overwhelmingly white, just a few African Americans, and those folks are usually called to what were formerly white congregations, or they started interracial church from the get-go.

Q: If the pastor is black, are whites going to be less likely to go to that church because the pastor is black and in charge?

A: Yup. It’s the sad fact of how race still works in our country. We find that over and over again.

Q: But a white church doesn’t feel very welcoming to African Americans, right?

A: That’s right, that’s right. So you can see what is the difficulty. I mean, how do you make these things happen? We’ve done a lot of studies to see when they do happen, why, and I mean there’s a variety of reasons. But one, it starts with a commitment where they decide this is going to be who we are. Maybe it’s out of their faith, a new way of looking at their faith, that we must be integrated across race. So they actually put it into their mission statement, and they start changing things as a result. They may change how worship works. They may actively recruit folks and try and get them to come and help them to feel comfortable and get them involved in leadership, and there’s a variety of ways.

Q: Are they glad they did it? Does the church end up being richer for it?

A: I never meet a church that wishes they didn’t do it. I never meet a leader that wishes they didn’t do it. They will all say, to the person, it’s hard. It’s difficult. It comes with complexities and confusion as you’re trying to go across cultures, and you don’t understand, you didn’t mean to offend somebody but you’ve offended somebody. But they will all say it just does something. They could never go back to being a uniracial congregation again. It brings excitement. It brings life. It allows them to be able to know people they would never know, to meet people that are outside the congregation they would have never connected with, you know, through the networks that they developed in the congregation.

Q: Would our society be a better society if we had more integrated churches?

A: I certainly think so, and I argue so, and I give talks on that. Are there risks by putting people together? Absolutely. Is there value in the black church? Absolutely. Is there value in having immigrant churches? Absolutely. But if we don’t have congregations gathering with people of different races, what we’re doing is we are redefining racial division, a racial inequality. I spent a lot of time developing in books why worshipping separately actually impacts inequality, economic, social, on and on. So I really do believe there are huge advantages to being together even though it’s difficult, even though we have a lot to learn.

Q: Is this integration happening more in one part of the country than in another part?

A: It happens a little bit more in the West, where there’s more fluid — where everybody’s originally from somewhere else. So they have a little bit more permission to do it. It happens the least, at the individual level at least, in the South, because the South has very strong, you know, set up black churches and white churches and a long history of that, and so it’s a bigger social cost. One of the things we find when we talk to people that attend these congregations, they all have social cost to it. People want to know why they’re doing that. Sometimes they’re questions about selling out on their race or “Are we not good enough that you have to go to this kind of congregation and not ours?” So there are costs to it, and I think they’re a little bit higher in the South because of its history.

Q: I guess a pastor really sometimes has to walk a tightrope as well as really be an amazing politician, too.

A: Absolutely. Every pastor I talk to says, and particularly if they’re African American they’ll say, “I’m not black enough for African Americans. I’m not white enough for the whites. I’m not Hispanic enough.” There’s always that sense of because we’re so racially defined, if you’re trying to cross the boundaries you don’t fit into any particular space. We just say there are five, you know, racial groups in the US. I say that these folks are what we call a sixth American. There’s something different. They are somebody who — they don’t exist in any particular racial category, so they all feel it and they kind of congregate to each other. So you find a lot of these sixth Americans congregate in these interracial congregations. They hang out together at work, at school, wherever.

Q: There is an impression that in many ways church has meant more to the black community over the years than any other particular section of America.

A: Absolutely. It may be changing, but still it’s the one place, that total control of an institution, that African Americans have. So sometimes, you know, you’ll hear the statement of African Americans saying, “I have to work with whites. I may have to shop with them. But on Sunday I don’t want to have to worship with them. I want to be able to just be myself and let my hair down.” It’s also, of course, as we know, the seat of political organization and the affirming of your blackness and so on.

Q: And hearing liberation theology. Is that fairly common, as in Jeremiah Wright’s church?

A: Yeah, there are variations of it. He says that very strongly, and you’ll find congregations that do that and others that would not say it as strongly. But it is a very common strain. Yeah, absolutely.

Q: Do African Americans worry that if whites come to my church, they’re going to take over?

A: Oh yeah, absolutely. That’s a big fear, right, and when I talk with black pastors, the same thing: If we try to have this move towards interracial congregations, whites will just dominate then. There are so many more of them, and they’re used to being in the position of power. So they’ll just take over, and we’ll lose the one thing we do have.

Q: I imagine there are phrases in the Bible they have to be very careful how they use.

A: Absolutely. There’s a lot of terminology, like “washes whiter than snow,” and these things which when they’re said in a uniracial congregation, they just go fine. But when they’re said in a mixed congregation, some people will get offended and wonder, “Why are you saying that? What are you saying?” And sometimes the clergy are blindsided by that. Other times they realize that ahead of time and say they’re not going to use those terms. So it gets complicated for sure.

Q: Is there a trend? Even though it may be slow, are we seeing more integrated churches?

A: We’re going to see more, and we are seeing more, and I’ll tell you exactly why. Not because white and black are more likely to get together. Only a third of the seven percent of congregations that are interracial are black and white. What’s happening is that Asian and Latino and other groups without that history are more likely to end up in either black churches or white churches and then make them multiracial churches. I talk about that in the US we have two cultures. We do not have an American culture. We have a white American culture and a black American culture. So when those two groups try to get together, [it’s] very difficult because they each feel like they have the right to their culture. If you move here from somewhere else, I often think if I move to Germany, for example, or if I move China and I go worship there I will understand and I’ll be willing to give up a lot of my culture because I’m in somebody else’s homeland. So I’m going to have to act German or Chinese, whatever that might mean. But in the US, when you have two separate cultures, each with its right, each of which has come to exist in this political entity in the last couple hundred years, each feeling like, “I have the right to hold onto my culture,” and that’s what makes it difficult.

Q: If you have a white church and Asians move in and Hispanics move in, is it less of a problem than if African Americans —

A: Yeah, I think it’s still a problem, but I think it’s easier, I really do, because of not having that similar history, so that’s why I think two-thirds of these mixed congregations are either white with Asian and Hispanic, or black with Asian and Hispanic.

Q: But if you have a white church, and you have a mix of Asians and Hispanics, it makes it easier for African Americans to come?

A: Yes and no, because what happens is sometimes these congregations will still have the white style of worship, even though they’re mixed, because folks are willing to give up whatever they may have come with. So it’s still quite a stretch for African Americans, yeah.

Q: Music is very, very important in a black church.

A: Absolutely, although every congregation will say, you know, every worship leader will say it’s vital. It’s very important, but again these are, you know, these are different cultural styles. So the tradition from Europe is that you’re supposed to emphasize the mind over the body, so you sing from a very kind of staid perspective. Again, there are charismatic white congregations all over, and they don’t sing that way. But, you know, on the average.

Q: I was recently in South Philly in a neighborhood that has a lot of violence. If the churches there were more integrated, do you think that would work more toward healing the wounds that are there?

A: It would because, you know, think about it. I see this in the way that sermons are preached. How would you give a Black Nationalist speech or campaign for the Republicans when you’re an integrated congregation? It doesn’t happen. But I see it happen in uniracial congregations all the time. But people — when they’re in mixed company, we speak differently. So one of the profound things we found when studying these congregations, the mixed ones, is just how much overlap and interracial ties that develop not only with the people in the congregation, but they start meeting each other’s families, and their friends, and they go to each other’s neighborhoods if they live in different neighborhoods, and at work they meet people they wouldn’t otherwise met, and so it creates a whole new definition of what the group is. So I think it’s a lot harder then to have racial violence against each other.

Q: Are you familiar with the City of Refuge Church and Reverend Rufus Smith?

A: I think they’re doing an amazing thing in that they have all groups. But they have large segments of white and black, and so I think it’s the most difficult of these kinds of congregations to have, and it takes a very deft leader, and him being African American, I mean I’m sure it’ll be interesting when you talk with him. He’ll have to be very knowledgeable of white culture, black culture, and walk these fine lines.

Q: His is more multiracial than, say, Pastor Woo’s —

A: Oh, Pastor [Rodney] Woo would be more multiracial and more groups, right. I think they have people from 40-some different countries. International church is what I would call it. They’re immigrants from all over the world, be they black, Hispanic, Asian, Middle Eastern.

Q: I assume that Pastor Woo’s church is the way it is either because the congregation wanted it, or because he wanted it. How did it end up being that way?

A: It was an all-white church. It was starting to decline. They had to hire a new pastor, and they hired him. But he came under the condition that “I want and I’m called to make this a multiethnic church.” So they knew. He’s interesting because he’s part-Asian, part-white. He’s married to a Hispanic woman, so that’s their family and that’s their vision.

Q: What’s it feel like in one of his services? I’m sure you’ve been there.

A: I think it’s pretty dynamic. There’s a lot of energy there and life, and you’ll have women dressed in their traditional African dress when they come, and you have people from all over the place, and some people have headphones on because they’re listening in Spanish.

Q: So it’s a rich cultural experience.

A: Yes, absolutely.

Q: And Pastor Rufus Smith and the City of Refuge. Tell me a little bit about that.

A: Same thing. There’s a lot of life there, but it’s a different sort, because there’s a lot less immigrants and a lot more racial, the mix of black and white in particular. I’ve actually never been to their worship for an extended period of time, so I can’t comment wisely on it. I can say that I’ve talked to people in both congregations, and there are both positives and negatives. I mean, so if I’ve talked to whites in City of Refuge, sometimes they’ll wonder, “Why do we do things a certain way, and why do we make a big deal out of events?” And what’s happening is they’re falling back on their understanding of the way that church should work. It’s not always working exactly like that, and they feel frustration or confusion. Sometimes people leave. That’s certainly common in mixed churches.

Q: So there are downsides, but the downsides are outweighed by the upsides?

A: Downsides, yeah, and when there are more downsides when churches first start — they go through stages of transforming to becoming multiracial. So in the beginning stages there’s often a lot of pain, a lot of confusion, a lot of people leave. Maybe there’s even anger. But if they make it through that they come to a new agreement, and they start creating a new culture, and it becomes something that people just — a lot of times they’ll say, “I couldn’t live without it. I just have to be there.”

Q: You see it manifest in any other ways, for instance, in the neighborhood? Do they socialize together if they go to church together?

A: They do, and that’s what really surprised us, because it was such strong effects. They’re more likely to live in integrated neighborhoods after they start being in these kinds of congregations. They are much more likely to say that their two very best friends are of a different race, that their circle of friends, their friends in the church, but also in their whole social network, absolutely. We’ve had people say, “Now when I go to work, I don’t feel uncomfortable talking to people of different races, and I go up and introduce myself, and I start making a new friend I wouldn’t have done otherwise.” And again, this connection that you get: I meet Joe at church. Joe’s connected to a whole network of people I don’t know. Joe likes me. He invites me over to his son’s birthday party, and I meet his whole family. I meet his friends. I get to know his neighborhood. That happens all the time.

Q: Will the election of Barack Obama have an impact on interracial churches? Will we see more of them?

A: Oh, yeah. I think with President Obama there’s going to be a discussion, because he himself is multiracial, because we have for the first time a non-white president. There’s going to be talk about what does this mean? What is it? Are we in a new era? And I think it’s going to open up a wider place for a discussion about we ought to come together in our churches, in our neighborhoods, in our work places, in our clubs and our networks. I think it’ll be more acceptable to talk about it. We’ll see what happens. It’ll take some time. But I think it will.

Q: But generally you think it will be positive.

A: Yes.

Q: Can you talk a little bit more about why it is difficult to integrate churches?

A: What sort of difficulties would happen when people of different cultures try to come together to worship? Tiny little things such as let’s tell jokes with each other. Humor is so culturally based that when I try to tell a joke as me being a white American, if I tell other white Americans, they’ll laugh. If I tell an African American, they might not laugh. In fact, they either might not find it funny, or they might find it offensive, and I didn’t mean it to be offensive. So these are the sort of little things that build up over time, just like in a marriage. You know, the little things can build up over time. Then of course there are bigger things that matter, like who do I see up there in the congregation? Do I see myself up there? Well, I don’t. So I ask the clergy why don’t I see myself represented in leadership? And I’m told, and this happens quite a bit, “We don’t think about race when we hire. We just hire the best person for the job.” So then I have to conclude, oh, the best people are all somebody other than my own race. So that’s difficult. How do we interpret the Bible? Should we stress things like justice and that God is somebody who cares about equality of all people? Or is he a God of love and a God who’s there to give me an afterlife? And different traditions stress different — so then there’s that. I talked to an African American who says before she goes into an interracial church, she sits in her car and she listens to gospel music to get her fill, and she goes into an interracial church where they don’t do gospel music, and she’s ready to accept the other sorts of ways of worshipping. So there’s that. There’s always the question of time. Does time at 10:00 mean 10:00 sharp? Or does it mean give or take a few minutes? And a few minutes, is that plus or minus two minutes? Or plus or minus ten, or maybe a half an hour each way? So different groups have different definitions, and then they clash on those. So it takes adept leadership to say we’re going to work through these.

Q: Are you looking at Protestant churches, Catholic churches?

A: Protestant, Catholic, even Muslim. We studied a mosque, and this is when we were at Notre Dame, and in this mosque they had people from a variety of countries, most of them immigrants. In some of the countries, when you go into a mosque you remove your shoes. To not do so could be punishable even by death in that nation. In other countries, it would be a great offense to remove their shoes when they come into the mosque, a sign of disrespect. So there was great clashes when, you know, if you believe you shouldn’t remove your shoes and someone’s taking their shoes off, how can they do this? That actually was such a big clash in this case that they had to put a curtain down the middle of where they would worship. And then they would have the shoe removers on one side, and the non-shoe removers on the other side until they could work through coming to understand why we might both be trying to worship authentically, and because of our cultural background we have these different ideas. But it took a while.

Q: Any particular denominations that you’ve seen the most progress?

A: You find the most in not any particular denomination specifically. It’s the style of worship. So if we have what we call a charismatic worship style, that means upbeat music and a more lively style of preaching usually, people are allowed to clap, say “Amen,” whether they’re mainline Protestant, conservative Protestant, and Catholics, whatever, they’re much more likely to be integrated. There’s one denomination in particular, though, that has pushed very hard to be multiracial in its denomination — not only its denomination but, I mean, in its congregations, and it’s called the Evangelical Covenant Church, http://www.covchurch.org/ which is headquartered in Chicago. Their whole goal is that’s the kind of churches they start, multiracial, and I think they say now 20 percent of their churches are that.

Q: Is there particular Christian scripture that points to interracial acceptance?

A: Scripture is vast, and people can pick and choose what they emphasize, and so for hundreds of years verses that said that you are to welcome the stranger, that with Christ there’s neither Jew nor Greek, male nor female, we’ve broken down the dividing wall with the original church, where Christians were first called Christian was the church of Antioch in which for the first time you had Jews, Gentiles of all different ethnicities come together as one people. That’s when they were called Christians. So these are the kind of things that now when people are trying to move towards multiracial congregations that they’re stressing. They’re talking about these scriptures that say we ought to come together, and that at Pentecost, when that the Holy Spirit is said to have come upon the first Christians, they were given the ability to speak in different languages, and so that no matter who the people were, they could all worship together. But you know, interestingly enough, those things were not talked about much at all for a few hundred years at least.

Q: But it’s there. It’s a fundamental part of Christianity that you should welcome people of all races.

Reverend BILL GAVENTA (Boggs Center on Developmental Disabilities): In every faith community there is a scriptural basis for welcome and hospitality. But you’ve also got congregations who live in cultures where people with disabilities have been hidden and ostracized and devalued in lots of ways, and too often faith communities sanctify prejudices in the community rather than challenge them. It shouldn’t be easier to get into a bar than a church.

SAFIYYAH A. MUHAMMAD: When I think back as a child, I don’t remember seeing anyone like Sufyaan at the mosque, no one. I don’t remember any children or adults like Sufyaan attending the mosque, and I don’t think that was by mistake. I think that we parents look at it as not just a distraction but an embarrassment. But he deserves to pray. He has a right to faith, too.

Well, the first time that Sufyaan attended the mosque not only was he talking out loud and using his hand motions, but he was running in and out of the rows. It wasn’t received well. There were whispers, there were talk: “He’s a bad kid. He obviously wasn’t raised right. That’s bad parenting.”

Imam W. DEEN SHAREEF (Masjid Waarith Ud Deen, Irvington, NJ): I think the primary challenge is a lack of knowledge, because sometimes families conceal the information that they have family members that have disabilities. Sister Safiyyah Muhammad made us aware of her son’s disability in terms of autism, and she’s made it almost like a quest for our community to become more knowledgeable about it.

SAFIYYAH: When the Koran refers to the believers it doesn’t say the believers except for the insane. Love for your brother what you want for yourself, and Sufyaan, autism or not, is considered a brother to another person who does not have autism.

Rev. GAVENTA: I’ve had families say to me, “I’ve fought all week to get my kid included in a school or whatever. I shouldn’t—I don’t want to have to fight when it comes to Sunday morning or Saturday.”

CYNTHIA MCCURDY (to her children): Are you guys ready to go?

In other families that I’ve talked to there’s been numerous instances of “We don’t know what to do with your kind” or “Please don’t come back.”

(to daughter Katie): Okay, that looks good.

FEMALE VOICE AT CHURCH: Katie’s going to definitely do the sign language.

KATIE: Hello.

WOMAN: You look nice in your white top.

KATIE: Why thank you.

BOY: How you been?

CYNTHIA: We noticed that people with disabilities were missing from communities of faith. It wasn’t that people with disabilities didn’t exist. They just weren’t being invited and welcomed into their houses of worship.

KATIE: I carry the banners that like, kind of like a spirit does too. And the Gospel, I have to read the Gospel. I have to study for it. Then we read the Gospel.

Pastor MARK SINGH-HUETER (St. Paul’s Lutheran Church, Exton, PA, addressing congregation): We begin in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit. Amen. Dear Lord, forgive the things I have done…

Everything’s presented in a way that really is much more interactive, whether they’re in the choir, whether they’re part of the skit, whether they’re doing readings, and so everybody gets to use their gifts and get involved.

BILLY: I’m reaching up to the Lord because of my voice. I can sing unto his praise.

SUSAN: Frankly, I would not feel comfortable just walking into any church for a service because of the noisiness, and we usually make some kind of a scene—like we are right now, pulling hair—where here, you know, we really don’t have to worry about it. A lot of times when we’re out in public, Joshua does experience a lot of stares when we go into restaurants and things. So we find that we really don’t go to a lot of the public places. This is wonderful, because not only does he get time to come and be exposed to worship, but I get to come back to church, too.

CYNTHIA: When I see individuals of all abilities feeling free to be themselves and to worship as God has intended them to be, I feel the Holy Spirit moving within everyone.

Rev. GAVENTA: Faith communities have gone from doing nothing to doing special things for people, with this sort of special services for special people and special religious education, to then hearing families and others say don’t do anything special for us. Just include us.

Rabbi DAN GROSSMAN (Adath Israel Congregation, Lawrenceville, NJ): Several families moved to this community because we make it an inclusive community. I don’t want a synagogue that doesn’t let Jews in. Isaac was blind—in most synagogues he couldn’t find his way around. Moses stuttered—in most synagogues he couldn’t read from the Torah that’s called the Books of Moses. So you got to create the environment where everybody has a place, and if you start with that notion, then everything flows from there.

SAM’S MOTHER: We were at a different synagogue. Sam’s autism, you know, outbursts occasionally, was really not tolerated. So we came here. Immediately the whole synagogue accepted us. He learned Hebrew and loves to be on the bema.

Rabbi GROSSMAN (signing): So when I come back in the summer, in August, we can study together? Alright. You’re a good guy.

BOY AT SYNAGOGUE: Not many deaf people read the Torah. My dad always said to me I am better reading in Hebrew than English.

Rabbi GROSSMAN: We have a reputation that we are a special needs community, when in fact that probably only makes up a small percentage of the active community in the synagogue. I think it defines the synagogue because it simply doesn’t happen elsewhere.

WOMAN: I happen to be married to a gentleman who’s a quadriplegic and in a power wheel chair. There’s lots of ways of creating access to the bema. But what’s really special to him is that everyone uses the ramp. That’s the first time he’s felt—when he’s been in a synagogue, accessible or not—where he’s felt there’s true inclusion.

Rabbi GROSSMAN: There are seats that can accommodate wheelchairs in a row, so you’re not stuck in an aisle separate from everybody else. There are large print prayer books, Braille prayer books. Most synagogues have Torahs usually higher; you have to lean forward into it. By having them free-hanging like this anyone can roll up literally in a wheelchair, take the Torah, lift it, and come out with it.

FATHER: What would happen to these kids if a synagogue like this wasn’t around?

Rev. GAVENTA: If everybody is created in the image of God our community should be a reflection of the diversity and the wonder of God’s creation.

Rabbi GROSSMAN: I’ve had so many people over the years say it feels like they’re part of a real, living community as opposed to an artificial community where only perfect people are sitting here.

SAFIYYAH: Some people would say what is he getting out of it? Why is he here? He’s a distraction. We need prayer more than he does.

But the fact is who’s to determine who gets more blessings and who doesn’t?

]]>It’s not hard to tell that these days, there are more women attending church services men. Some churches are now attempting to bring back the missing men through programs that encourage them to be better husbands, fathers and friends. The meetings also sometimes emphasize more masculine qualities that the Gospels do not.

]]>http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2006/11/17/november-17-2006-men-in-church/19794/feed/0 Storefront Churcheshttp://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2006/07/14/july-14-2006-storefront-churches/19319/
http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/2006/07/14/july-14-2006-storefront-churches/19319/#disqus_threadFri, 14 Jul 2006 14:31:39 +0000http://www.pbs.org/wnet/religionandethics/?p=19319The post Storefront Churches appeared first on Religion & Ethics NewsWeekly.
]]>Popular in poorer neighborhoods, storefront churches preach love and gratitude. Often set up wherever space is available, these houses of worship have the unique capability to meet their worshippers right where they are.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor: As the Jewish High Holidays begin this coming week, we note a growing movement within American Judaism that recalls the tendency in most faiths for worshippers over the years to move back and forth between the head and the heart — theology and doctrine on one side, spiritual fervor on the other.

The Jewish Renewal movement is not widely known, but it is having an impact, as Kim Lawton reports.

KIM LAWTON: It’s just before the Jewish High Holidays, and in preparation, a small group has gathered in Silver Spring, Maryland. They are saying the traditional Al Cheyt prayer of repentance. But there’s nothing traditional about this Al Cheyt.

Ms. SHERE (Praying with Group): For not composting, reusing, and recycling all that we could. Al Cheyt she’chatanu l’fanecha.

LAWTON: Instead of the recited prayers led by a rabbi, these Jews are creating their own prayers of repentance and offering them while the group chants in response.

LAWTON: It’s part of the Jewish Renewal movement, a popular effort that encourages Jews to ignite their individual spirituality by rediscovering the ancient practices of their faith and making those practices relevant for today.

Ms. SHERE: It really has given me a doorway to a personal relationship with God. I never would have, one, really had a desire to do that. Two, I never would have thought it was Jewish at all.

LAWTON: The renewal movement combines elements of Kabbalah — Jewish mysticism — with the fervor of Hasidism, the 18th-century Orthodox movement founded in Eastern Europe. Renewal participants include synagogue members from across the Jewish spectrum and secular Jews. Typically, renewal worship includes dancing, chanting, drumming, and meditation. It’s grassroots and participatory.

Ms. SHERE: Often people go to shul, and there’s a rabbi or a cantor kind of serving as the prayer intercessor or the intermediary between the congregants and God. And renewal really says, “No, that’s not how we do it. We’re the performers, and God is the audience.”

Rabbi ZALMAN SCHACHTER-SHALOMI: Once you begin to speak about the longing that we have and you sing the melodies that bring the longing to the fore, and you express that in prayer, in that longing there is a response that comes from the universe. [It is] the best way in which we can say that this is God.

LAWTON: Polish-born Schachter-Shalomi, affectionately known as Reb Zalman, fled the Nazis and came to the U.S. in 1941. An Orthodox Hasidic rabbi, he became increasingly concerned about what he saw as a lack of spirituality in American Judaism.

Rabbi SCHACHTER-SHALOMI: There are some people who after the Holocaust felt that we have to do restoration. We have to get back to where Judaism was before Hitler decimated 6 million. And it was such a deep cut, as it were, of vital power and energy of our people.

LAWTON: Trying to restore that energy, Reb Zalman taught that in addition to working to repair the world through social justice, Jews should work to repair their own hearts. In 1976, he founded ALEPH, the Alliance for Jewish Renewal. Today ALEPH has 40 affiliated communities around the world.

At renewal conferences and retreats, participants engage in Jewish rituals and study the meanings behind them. They are also encouraged to create their own spiritual expressions. They incorporate elements from other traditions such as reggae and gospel, and even a Jewish version of yoga.

Rabbi DANIEL SIEGEL (Alliance for Jewish Renewal, ALEPH): We may borrow a form from another tradition; they may borrow a form from us. But the essential experience is something that each of us gets to in our own way.

LAWTON: Reb Zalman says different faiths have much to teach each other. In 1990, he traveled to Dharamsala, India for dialogue with the Dalai Lama. The trip became the subject of the book THE JEW IN THE LOTUS.

Rabbi SCHACHTER-SHALOMI: We work in different spaces, but it doesn’t mean that we do different work. We each want to preserve as much of the ethnic and traditional material that we can, but to transform it so that it can be practiced in the present.

LAWTON: The movement is having a growing impact. Renewal practices are now used in synagogues across Jewish denominations. Renewal has also attracted many disaffected Jews, especially those who were exploring Eastern religions.

Professor Neil Gillman has studied the renewal movement. He says its popularity is a reaction to a Judaism that overemphasizes the intellectual.

Rabbi NEIL GILLMAN (Professor of Jewish Philosophy, Jewish Theological Seminary): Some young American Jews rediscovered the fact that, “Hey, there is this Hasidic and mystical tradition that our parents and our grandparents had rejected but that’s fun, and it’s attractive, and it meets our needs in a way that the synagogues that the Western European Jews transplanted into America did not.”

LAWTON: That was the case for Rabbi Shefa Gold.

Rabbi SHEFA GOLD (Center for Devotional Energy & Ecstatic Practice): One of the reasons why I left the synagogue — it was so hard for me to be in the synagogue — is because when I began to pray I wanted to move my body, and I wanted to feel my emotions and bring all of myself to it, and it felt as if I could just be there from the head up.

LAWTON: Gold says she experimented with several other spiritual paths before renewal brought her back into Judaism. She now writes hundreds of chants that are used in services around the world.

Renewal is also providing a spiritual home for people like Judy Barokas, who was raised Orthodox but says she wants to stay on the secular side of Judaism.

JUDY BAROKAS: Jewish Renewal is very low on dogma, and people come to it from all angles. The expression of joy through drumming, through music, through chanting — I think there are parts of the brain that are only touched by communal expression of joyful sound, and that touches my heart and touches my head and touches the rest of me so that that’s where I find religious expression.

LAWTON: But it’s not for everyone. Many dislike the free-form style of worship. Others worry that renewal’s all-inclusive approach may water down Judaism. And Professor Gillman says some Jews raise concerns that the movement emphasizes spiritual experience over observing Jewish law.

Rabbi GILLMAN: Jewish law takes prayer very seriously and codifies what you say, when you say it. In a traditionalist framework, you just don’t say, “I don’t feel like praying now,” or “I don’t feel like saying these words,” or “I want to pray in a much more spontaneous way.”

LAWTON: Renewal leaders shrug off such criticisms.

Rabbi SIEGEL: It’s always our intention to augment and enhance existing practice. We are not in the business of trying to replace anyone. And I think over time people are beginning to realize that that’s actually true of us and slowly but surely, people are becoming more accepting and more open to what we offer.

Rabbi SCHACHTER-SHALOMI: I feel that as long as I can connect people in a loving direction with God, the rest is up to God.

LAWTON: They believe the movement will revitalize Jewish worship and bring Jews back to the faith.

BOB ABERNETHY, anchor (March 18, 2005): Today, a look at one of the great phenomena of religion in America — the prominence and the paradox of white Protestant evangelicals. They make up about a quarter of the population. Their political influence is strong. Their churches seem to be thriving. And yet, many evangelicals say they feel misunderstood by the wider culture — under siege — as if they were an estranged minority.

Judy Valente has a special report on who evangelicals are, how they worship and what they believe.

UNIDENTIFIED PASTOR: Would you come and join me here at the altar and let’s pray together.

JUDY VALENTE: Listen to the words of born-again evangelical Protestants on their personal relationship with Jesus Christ.

NOEL TURNER (Dauphin Way Baptist Church, Mobile, Alabama): The Lord saved me when I was nine, and that has transformed me.

JUNE FORBES (Vineyard Christian Fellowship Church, Bloomington, Illinois): It gives me the courage to go on day to day because I know that I do have a redeemer.

MARGARET TURNER (Dauphin Way Baptist Church): I don’t feel like my life would be worth much without him.

UNIDENTIFIED PASTOR: Dear Jesus, we remember what you have done for us.

VALENTE: The core belief of evangelicals is that they are saved because Jesus died for their sins. They believe it’s their duty to share their faith with everyone. They try to live according to the commands of Scripture.

A variety of factors have galvanized American evangelicals in recent decades, among them the election to the presidency of Jimmy Carter, a born-again Christian, and the polarizing debate over abortion on demand. Also, evangelicals have proved adept at using radio and television to spread their message.

BILLY GRAHAM: Do you love God? Do you love him with all your heart? With all your soul?

The majority of evangelicals are white, and most of them are politically conservative. African Americans make up about one fifth of the total. Most black Protestants share many of the same religious practices as white evangelicals, but they are much more liberal on a number of social and political issues.

Hispanics make up a smaller percentage. Many attend Pentecostal churches, heavy on emotion and faith healing. They are not as conservative as white evangelicals, nor are they as liberal on some issues as African Americans.

Evangelicals are a little more Southern, rural, and older than Americans as a whole. But what distinguishes them most is the intensity of their beliefs, and how actively they try to live them out.

Dr. Mark Noll

Dr. MARK NOLL (Historian and Professor, Wheaton College): Evangelicals often focus upon their spiritual lives and on the good they can do in a community.

VALENTE: Mark Noll is a historian and professor of Christian thought at a leading evangelical liberal arts institution, Wheaton College in Illinois. According to Noll, evangelicals are still looked down on by some people.

Dr. NOLL: Often, to those who don’t appreciate evangelicals, they’re seen as rednecks, as crypto-fundamentalists, as people without education.

VALENTE: But in fact, nearly half of all evangelicals say they have some college education or a college degree. Increasingly, they see themselves as part of the mainstream.

Margaret Turner is a court reporter; her husband, Noel, a mortgage company officer. Theirs is a traditional congregation: the Dauphin Way Baptist Church in Mobile, Alabama.

Ms. TURNER: Everybody thinks Baptists are just Bible-thumping people that don’t ever have any fun, and Baptists don’t dance, and Baptists don’t drink, and Baptists don’t do this.

We had a supper club last night here at our house, and we had 12 people here and we laughed and cut up and listened to music just like everybody else does. It’s not a bunch of “do nots.” The Bible is not a bunch of “do nots.”

VALENTE: But to a greater extent than most Americans, evangelicals say they are concerned about moral values, including sex and violence in the media.

And they worry about the secularization of society. For example, Dauphin Way Baptist Church was very active in trying to keep a monument depicting the Ten Commandments on display at the Alabama Supreme Court building. The specific issues that concern evangelicals: abortion rights, prayer in schools, and same-sex marriage. And when it comes to personal moral behavior:

Mr. TURNER: The things that we don’t participate in that other fellow employees might participate in …

Ms. TURNER: They might go out for a drink after work, and we would not go.

Mr. TURNER: Participating in e-mails …

Ms. TURNER: Right, dirty jokes, we might walk away from that.

UNIDENTIFIED PASTOR: Look at verses three to five.

VALENTE: Margaret goes to Bible study on Thursdays, and again on Sunday mornings, with her husband.

Mr. TURNER: We view the Bible as the inspired word of God.

Ms. TURNER: If we want answers, that’s where we get it. We can go to the Bible, and we can find our answers there.

VALENTE (To Ms. Turner): The story of creation, the story of Adam and Eve, how the world was created — literally true?

Ms. TURNER: Absolutely. Yes.

Dr. NOLL: I think evangelicals may still feel marginalized and as minority members in a hostile culture.

Ms. TURNER: That doesn’t bother me that I’m in the minority. I’m not offended that I’m in the minority. I’m not ashamed that I’m in the minority. If anything, I’m proud that I’m in the minority.

VALENTE: Like 90 percent of evangelicals, the Turners describe themselves as born again.

Margaret and Noel Turner

Ms. TURNER: If you’re non-Christian, then you’re not saved.

Mr. TURNER: You’re basically a nonbeliever.

Ms. TURNER: You’re a nonbeliever.

VALENTE: But according to our survey, less than half of evangelicals feel it is necessary to be a born-again Christian to get to heaven — perhaps an indication of a more accepting attitude among some evangelicals toward other believers.

UNIDENTIFIED TEACHER: Where’s your Bible, Jenna?

VALENTE: Bible study begins early in life at the Oak Hills Church in San Antonio, Texas. The church is trying to give its youngest members a head start.

At Oak Hills, as in other megachurches, a person’s denomination is not considered important. Overall, about one quarter of evangelicals say they are nondenominational. And a third of them say they have converted to evangelicalism.

Gabriela Gomez, for example. She came to the U.S. from Mexico as a young girl. She had been raised Catholic. Now she teaches one of the Sunday school classes at Oak Hills.

GABRIELA GOMEZ (Sunday School Teacher, Oak Hills Church, San Antonio, Texas): The core values are in the Bible. Your children are involved in Bible study and Bible lessons, and I think that’s very important, for our children to be growing with spiritual values.

VALENTE: Gomez opposes abortion and same-sex marriage. But as an immigrant, she finds issues of poverty and education just as important.

Ms. GOMEZ: My kids have a better life than the life I had when I was growing up. But I also want them to see that life is not just here at home, that there’s children that don’t have homes, that lack going to school, that lack food.

VALENTE: Her pastor is Max Lucado, who is also a best-selling inspirational author.

Reverend MAX LUCADO (Pastor, Oak Hills Church) (To Congregation): God will take care of me. Now you say: God will take care of me. Now doesn’t that feel good?

VALENTE: Lucado changed the name from Oak Hills Church of Christ to Oak Hills Church. He calls it a “community” church, and wants it to be the biggest in town.

Dr. NOLL: People come to the church because of its skillful presentation of the Christian message and its efficient organization of Christian worship and Christian practice.

VALENTE: Part of the broad appeal of Oak Hills has to do with diversity of worship styles. An a cappella service takes place in the main sanctuary, while at the same time other congregants, including Randy Boggs, listen to bluegrass at a service down the hall.

RANDY BOGGS (Congregant, Oak Hills Church): We are evangelicals and we are, I believe, much wider and deeper than some stereotypes would indicate. We represent a broad spectrum of political views.

The one thing we do have in common is that outlandish, crazy story about Christ on the cross — the Passion of Christ.

We kind of see ourselves as this pipeline, with God at one end, the world at the other. And we just want to be this conduit of his love. Sometimes in trying to do that, we’re misunderstood.

VALENTE: For Boggs — unlike most evangelicals — issues of immigration and the environment are at least as important as abortion and same-sex marriage.

Mr. BOGGS: I wince a little when I hear these harsh judgments. The Bible says we are all sinners. This is an area where I think we will grow and develop and be able to show compassion for every human being, every human being, and at the same time hold up Christ as our model.

VALENTE: One reason evangelical megachurches have succeeded is their welcoming, contemporary worship style. But some evangelical leaders wonder whether, in trying to be popular, they’re watering down their doctrine. Mark Noll:

Dr. NOLL: If the end product is to be wishy-washy and unsettled, without an anchor, tossed about on every wind of contemporary culture, then of course that would be a negative situation. If something genuine and filled with integrity from the Christian tradition is maintained, then this is probably a good thing, to reach out more broadly with that kind of message.

VALENTE: June Forbes calls herself a “prayer warrior.” At six a.m. every day of the week, she arrives at the Vineyard Christian Fellowship Church in the central Illinois town of Bloomington. For an hour, along with anyone else who shows up, she prays.

Ms. FORBES: It’s very important to me because we really focus in on many issues of the day, our nation, and our president.

VALENTE: And during this time she prays that the gospel will be spread.

Ms. FORBES: It’s very important to me to reach the lost. It is so important. That’s why I go to prayer every morning. That’s why I cry out to the Lord for people that don’t know Jesus.

When you believe the Bible, that there is a hell and eternal damnation, you do not want to see one precious soul go to hell, because eternity is forever.

VALENTE: The Vineyard churches sprang up in Southern California 20 years ago. There are now about 600 of them around the country. This one is small, perhaps about 150 members. Informality is the key, and so is an emphasis on the Holy Spirit. They want their message to be a universal one — hence, the prominence of a world map. June Forbes came here after 50 years in a mainline Protestant church, where she says something was missing.

Ms. FORBES: You put on your very best clothes, you went, and you smiled and you were nice to everybody because everybody was nice to you. But you might truly have had a real problem in your heart, but you just didn’t feel free to share it with other people.

Reverend DAVID BIELBY (Pastor, Vineyard Christian Fellowship Church): The idea with the Vineyard movement is to take away the barriers between real Christianity and people where they live today. We’re trying to take authentic Christianity and put it into the culture of America.

Lord, for those who have been weak lately, they’ve been struggling physically, I ask you to restore them.

Dr. NOLL: The Vineyard churches have been weak on tradition but strong on personal experience. In a way, they have appealed to an American environment that is also weak on tradition and strong on personal experience.

Always, however, when you stress personal experience, the risk is run that you, rather than God, will become the center of religion.

VALENTE: It is the personal experience with Jesus that has meant the most to June Forbes. She describes the pain of losing her husband three years ago.

Ms. FORBES: I thought I couldn’t stand it. I would just cry out to the Lord – “I can’t take this pain any longer, you’ve just got to come and help me walk through this.” And he did. The loneliness was sometimes overwhelming. He held me so close some nights, I can’t tell you how sweet it was.

I’m happy. I’m happy to serve him. I’m honored to serve him.

Dr. NOLL: To be a Christian of any sort, and certainly to be an evangelical Christian, is to remain confident in the work of God and Jesus Christ. So long as evangelicals are secure in that confidence, then whatever happens, they will be secure in the future.

VALENTE: The evangelicals we met seemed convinced of the rightness of their beliefs and secure in their behavior, and with a strong sense of belonging — often instilled at an early age, as when the kids at Oak Hills sing to “The One True God.”

(KIDS SINGING): All right let’s hear you: “He is God, He is God. The one true God, the one true God. There is no doubt, there is no doubt, so shout it out!”